Solving the water crisis in China and at home

Vinti Singh, News-Times

Vinti Singh, Staff Writer

Published 10:30 pm, Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Chris Kukk of Brookfield, a WestConn professor who went to China recently to help the government devise policy papers for water conservation, is shown in his home office on Monday July 26, 2010.
Photo: Carol Kaliff

Chris Kukk of Brookfield, a WestConn professor who went to China recently to help the government devise policy papers for water conservation, is photographed at home, Monday July 26, 2010.
Photo: Carol Kaliff

DANBURY -- Chris Kukk stood at the edge of the forest, observing a stand of pine trees losing a turf war to encroaching sand dunes.

Kukk, a political science professor at Western Connecticut State University in Danbury, was in the Gobi Desert, a place so parched the Chinese have resorted to an ancient technique of stacking cubes of straw to retain the sparse rainfall.

Overgrazing and deforestation continue to expand the desert. Kukk's nearby forests protect one of the last remaining water reservoirs in the region. If they are overtaken by the desert, neighboring city-dwellers will face a dire water crisis.

But Kukk's presence is a sign of hope. The Chinese government invited him and 11 other experts from the United States to help stop the damage. He spent a month there with the Association for International Practice Training, returning in June.

The team proposed China set up a regional "water rights market" -- a solution that will be officially presented to the State Department within a week to get the recommendations straight into the hands of policy makers.

Citizens of the region are guaranteed access to water, but a water rights market calls for industries -- that want to tap into water reserves -- pay for the pipes and infrastructure to do so.

If the industry contributes to keeping the water clean and helps maintain its flow, it earns the rights to a certain percentage.

"Our job is to come up with the economic formula to determine that percentage to run the first water rights market in China," Kukk said. He wants WestConn students to be the ones to do it.

Kukk is putting together a team of WestConn students to embark on a 2 1/2 week fact-finding mission to the China's Mongolian border. It will take "at least a few years" before the formula is finalized, and the Chinese government will have to approve the project each step of the way.

Giving students the opportunity to apply what they learn to the real world is "what education is all about," Kukk said. "It's not just about knowing how to think, but how to act."

Sitting at his home office in Brookfield, Kukk said water problems are in his own backyard. His neighbor had to dig a deeper well to reach the sinking water table. He said that he heard a former WestConn dean had to drill another 300 feet to hit water under her Danbury property.

Kukk wants to organize a group of students to go to town halls and collect data about well drillings "to see if there's a problem."

"We have anecdotal evidence," Kukk said. "Let's try to adjust it before it becomes a severe problem."

While in China, Kukk offered a Connecticut-based solution to its water woes. Proposed state legislation calls for reclassifying certain rivers so they could not be used to supply water.

"They might be using Connecticut legislation as a model," Kukk said.

Only about one-fourth of the students he talks to realize the world is entering a water crisis, Kukk said. But that's better than in the 1990s, when he worked at an energy company and would get laughed at whenever he suggested water was running out.

"People think water has been here since they can remember, so it will always be here," Kukk said.